Doug DeMuro

I am
often accused of harming the environment.
This is probably because I drive a large, heavy, V8-powered
sport-utility vehicle, even though I'm not married, I live by myself, and I
work from home. "Do you really need that car?" people say, glaring at
me with the same look you'd give to someone who urinates on the floor.

"Need"
is an interesting concept when it comes to vehicles, and I've often wondered
about it. What do any of us really need anyway? If we went by need, you could probably
eliminate all high-end luxury vehicles, because who really needs to have their butt massaged as they drive down the street,
listening to showtunes?

"Need"
would also drastically shrink the size of today's modern American family
vehicle. Here's what I mean: I know a
couple that recently had a baby. Now,
you know, and I know, that a baby is rather small. When I say this, what I mean is that I currently
have pots in my kitchen where you could store a baby, if for whatever reason
you needed to conceal it from the authorities.

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But the
size thing didn't seem to matter to my friends, who responded to the birth of
this child, this tiny little child,
this creature that's no longer than my forearm, by purchasing a minivan. A huge
minivan. A minivan that probably looks
to the baby like the Hindenburg looked
to all those people on the ground as they were running away from it.

Now,
their argument here is that the baby will eventually get bigger, and that they
might have more children, and that
any time you go anywhere with the baby, it must also be accompanied by a large
assemblage of baby accessories, which of course includes pacifiers, diapers,
toys, books, high chairs, strollers, that living room sofa where the baby likes
to fall asleep, entire backyard playground sets, etc.

But my
response to this would be that Europeans stick their babies inside small cars, tiny cars, really; cars such as the Volkswagen
Lupo and the Renault Clio and other vehicles with cutesy names that indicate
they could be eliminated from the road at any moment by a violent gust of wind. The Europeans seem to do just fine with these cars, even though such cars don't have any room for modern niceties, like
strollers, or baby toys, or airbags. So
do my friends really need that
minivan?

And
this brings us back to the original point.
Does anyone need anything
other than maybe a used Camry? Do I, a
single city-dweller, really need an
SUV? Maybe not. But I'm glad I have one, because the city
really is the best place to own an SUV.

Now, at
first glance, I know this sounds crazy.
In fact, it sounds insane. I'm trying to convince you, a manual
transmission-loving station wagon enthusiast whose only experience with SUVs
came when that one backed into you at Target, that city-dwellers, not dirt road
country folk, should own gas-guzzling, high-riding, insulated-from-the-road
SUVs. But before you take up a
Kickstarter campaign to burn down my home and steal my baby-concealing pots,
please hear me out. I have my
reasons. And they are:

1.
The city has the worst roads in human history. It should be noted, before I even get started, that I am
not suggesting SUVs are the perfect cars for suburb-dwelling soccer moms who
drive on well-paved streets with names like "Willow Tree Way." Instead, I am suggesting that it's completely
OK to justify SUV ownership when you live in a city whose annual roads budget
is roughly equal to my annual socks budget.

Seriously,
I sometimes wonder how people with sports cars manage to survive it here. In my alley, we have enormous potholes;
potholes so big that they've spawned baby potholes that team up with their
elders to destroy your lower control arms.
Of course, given that this is a private alley, you'd think things would
improve on the street. But they
don't. On the street, you have entire
pothole gangs who roam the city and
sprout up overnight, in whatever location they feel like they can do the most
damage. Admittedly, the city sometimes
notices these potholes and fixes them, but unfortunately their fix involves –
this is completely true – covering them
with a steel plate. So we have some
serious issues here, and things only get worse with…

2.
Bad weather. I've been told by many people that
you don't need an SUV to drive in bad weather.
Well, these people never spent an entire weekend shoveling my dad's 1998
Toyota Camry out of a snowdrift in Denver when they were 12. I did.
My dad did, too, which is why he later purchased an SUV based on the Toyota Camry. It's the best of both worlds, really: it
still feels like a Camry, but now
snowdrifts are child's play; ready to be bounded through with joyous glee
whenever you wish to experience the vehicle's true capabilities. This is
according to the commercials, anyway.

Now, in
Atlanta, we have an entirely different weather problem, which is rain. If you think rain isn't enough of a weather
issue to justify SUV ownership, then you've never been to Atlanta. That's because it rains here more than it
does in notoriously rainy places, such as Seattle, and yet the city's entire
drainage system seems to flow through the master bathroom shower drain of a
medium-sized single-family home.

The
result is that I am constantly driving through extremely large puddles, some of
which are located on side streets that I don't really need to go down, except
that someone told me there would be an extremely large puddle there. This would be tremendously difficult if you
had a car, but it's perfect for those
of us with SUVs. And this brings me to
my final point, which is…

3.
Everyone else is driving an SUV. And for God's sake, if you can't
beat 'em, join 'em. Especially if it
means you'll finally be able to see over 'em in traffic.

Now, I
realize that my arguments here may not be enough to convince you that an SUV
is, in fact, perfect for city life. Here
you may be thinking of tight parking spaces and narrow roads and various other
city problems, like the fact that an SUV puts you at eye level with angry
homeless people. But as I sit above all
the other vehicles in traffic, looking down on you, the average reader, I have
to wonder: do you really need that
sports car?

@DougDeMurois
the author of Plays With Cars.
He operates PlaysWithCars.com. He
owned an E63 AMG wagon and once tried to evade police at the Tail of the Dragon
using a pontoon boat. (It didn't work.) He worked as a manager for Porsche Cars
North America before quitting to become a writer, largely because it meant he
no longer had to wear pants. Also, he wrote this entire bio himself in the
third person.